Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Republicans in disarray!

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Second rate reporter says what?

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

He really is that stupid.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

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Breaking News: Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Admits to Committing Perjury During His Public Testimony Before the House Judiciary Committee!

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And there appears to have been a nascent attempt to reprise the Bush 43 US Attorneys firing scandal involved too boot! Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times has the scoop.

Update at 6:15 PM EDT

Here’s the video of Congressman Nadler’s remarks:

Discuss amongst yourselves…

Open thread!

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Paging Mr. Baron…Paging Mr. Miller…Norwegian Anti-Fraud Squad On Line One

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Mr. Baron and Mr. Miller, you may recall, have a close relationship with the cheetoh-faced, ferret-heedit shitgibbon.

We don’t know the name of anyone who may have displaced Miller and Baron in the Orange One’s heart, but he is clearly keeping busy:

A total of 329 candidates — 217 individuals and 112 organizations — are being considered for this year’s prize, which will be announced in October…

But a wrinkle in this time-honored process — the peace prize was first awarded in 1901 — emerged on Tuesday, when the committee announced that it had uncovered what appeared to be a forged nomination of President Trump for the prize. The matter has been referred to the Oslo police for investigation.

Mr. Baron or whatever the alias now may be is, it seems, a recidivist:

…the forgery appears to have occurred twice: Olav Njolstad, the secretary of the five-member committee, said it appeared that a forged nomination of Mr. Trump for the prize was also submitted last year — and was also referred to the police. (The earlier forgery was not disclosed to the public at the time.)

What kind of person is at once so disdainfully fraudulent and so hilariously inept at his con?  Who could it be?

Well…Trump, recall, was the man who put his lens-shattering mug in fake Time Man of the Year covers, so there’s form here.

I’d file this one under “Point and Mock”…but then I remember that the entire GOP stands in thrall to this pathetic, hollow, terrified tosser.  And then I weep for the Republic, and worry, desperately, for my son.

(Also too:  I would so love an appendix to the Mueller Report dealing with all this.)

Image: Jacob Willemsz de Wet, Allegory of Peace triumphant over War, 1650

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War on the Sub-Continent! The Indian Air Force Has Attacked Across the Line of Control

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(Line of Control Separating India and Pakistan)

While this specific response may not have been what was anticipated, those of us who follow security measures on the sub-continent have been expecting India to retaliate for a Jaish e Mohammed attack against Indian police officers earlier this month.

India said a Pakistan based militant group, Jaish-e Mohammed carried out Thursday’s deadly attack on an Indian police convoy in disputed Kashmir, and demanded that its neighbor act against militant groups operating from its soil.

A car laden with explosives slammed into the convoy, killing at least 44 soldiers in the deadliest attack on security forces in decades in the region, raising tensions with Pakistan which claims the territory.

“We demand that Pakistan stop supporting terrorists and terror groups operating from their territory and dismantle the infrastructure operated by terrorist outfits to launch attacks in other countries,” India’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

While The Reuters reporting states the Indian casualties were soldiers, subsequent reporting clarified they were police officers.

As of right now we know that the Indian Air Force (IAF) struck well past the Line of Control. Everyone is now waiting on Islamabad’s response. Apparently, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) has their F-16s on combat air patrol (CAP) over Islamabad, which is to be expected.

The spokesman for the Pakistan Armed Forces is making the following statements about the attack, which contradicts some of the reporting above:

And this reporting from NDTV:

https://twitter.com/VishnuNDTV/status/1100245335635607552

As of right now, there is nothing posted by either the Indian Ministry of Defense or the Indian Air Force on social media about the attack. Though both the Congress Party and Rahul Ghandi have responded:

Something that is important to keep in mind, just as in the case in the Levant, because of the geography of the region, where basing is located, and the capabilities of modern fighter jets, time to station for either the IAF or the PAF is well below the ability of the other side to respond to a quick strike. I would expect that right now the Pakistani Prime Minister Imram Khan is being pulled in at least three different directions: one by his civilian advisors, one by he military, and one by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

According to NDTV’s live feed:

Feb 26, 2019
10:04 (IST)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is meeting with top ministers in the cabinet committee on security at his home in Delhi to take stock of the situation.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Minister of Defence Nirmala Sitharaman, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and other top officials of the government are attending the meeting.

Feb 26, 2019
09:55 (IST)
Indian Air Force has put on high alert all air defence systems along the International Border and Line of Control, reports news agency ANI.

Now we have to wait and see what happens. India’s response to the 11 February 2019 attack on its paramilitary police is unprecedented. As Ankit Panda indicates below, no nuclear weapons state has used conventional air power to attack another nuclear weapons state’s territory before.

All we can do now is wait for Pakistan’s response and then India’s response to that if any.

Open thread!

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Andrew McCabe Broke Some News Today

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Apparently a lot of news! McCabe did an extended interview with Nicolle Wallace this afternoon. I’d like to highlight a couple of important items that were revealed.

The question that didn’t get asked, and even if it did, I’m not sure McCabe would have answered it, is whether he’s got a copy of the four page draft that the President wrote to justify firing Comey? If McCabe has a copy, that’s going to make his lawsuit much, much easier. And if he doesn’t, the discovery is going to be amazing.

McCabe apparently made some other news in his chats with the former DOJ and FBI officials who Wallace had booked as her contributing commentators for the remainder of the segment.

According to Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI Assistant Director for National Security (that’s the counterintelligence and counter-terrorism division), McCabe related to Figliuzzi and former DOJ spokesman Matt Miller in the green room before the show that he didn’t open new investigations into the President. Rather, he added the President to the existing and ongoing counterintelligence investigation into the Russian active measures campaign against the US. Figliuzzi also related that McCabe informed them that he also added the obstruction of justice investigation into the President’s actions to that ongoing investigation into the Russian active measures campaign against the US. It is this counterintelligence investigation that Robert Mueller inherited when he was appointed as the special counsel.

I know everyone is stressed right now, especially given CNN’s somewhat credulous reporting and The Washington Post‘s much tighter reporting that the Special Counsel is winding down his investigation. And what that may or may not mean. I know others are still angry that no one was doing anything to stop this from happening as it was happening. What was revealed today, however, confirms what we knew: that something was, indeed, happening. Specifically a counterintelligence investigation had been opened into the President’s campaign, his business, a number of people within the President’s orbit, and then ultimately the President in regard to the Russian active measures campaign against the US.

I have no idea what next week is going to bring, let alone March, but I do know something about counterintelligence and counterintelligence investigations. And that something includes that these things are designed to be completely compartmented, not to leak, and to take as long as they take. Because the purpose of them is to identify, delineate, and then stop the threat to US national security. Sometimes this means prosecutions. A lot of times it doesn’t. The Venona counterintelligence investigation lasted from 1943 until 1980 and the materials it produced weren’t declassified until 1993!

At this point we don’t really know whether the Special Counsel is, indeed, finishing up. Or whether he’s just streamlining for the next phase of the investigation he’s pursuing. Or if he’s just handing everything off to the career prosecutors in the appropriate Federal districts, as well as the appropriate state (New York and Maryland) and local (Washington DC) prosecutors who will bring the rest of the indictments and carry out the rest of the prosecutions based on the work that the Special Counsel’s Office has been conducting for the past two years. But we do know that some people, even as we’ve discovered that they are flawed, working in Federal institutions that don’t always get it right, stood up and made difficult decisions to ensure that the appropriate investigations were opened and situated in a way that they could be conducted.

I’m going to leave the last word here to former US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama Joyce Vance:

Everybody take a deep breath and cut yourselves and everyone else a little slack. This is a marathon, not a sprint. And as BettyC has highlighted for us all, there’s a new sheriff in DC and she takes her responsibilities as the leader of the co-equal legislative branch of government very seriously. As do her deputies.

Open thread!

PS: I fully expect that if Attorney General Barr tries to bury Special Counsel’s work so it never sees the light of day that it will leak. And before that happens, as was the case with Jeff Sessions and Matt Whitaker, I expect information to leak about Barr and his past actions and activities. As was the case with the leak about Sessions’ contacts with Kislyak that forced his recusal and the leak that the company that Whitaker had been involved with was under Federal investigation, something will be leaked about Barr as a warning shot across the bow. Sessions was smart enough to get the message. I’m not sure if Whitaker was, but it really didn’t seem to matter. We’ll have to wait and see if Barr is as smart as Sessions.

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A Quick Post On Selling Nuclear Technology To The Saudis

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Big news this morning about the continuing pressure to sell nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. Ken Dilanian was the first with the story, and Washington Post is catching up. Like a lot of stories about the Trump administration’s dicey connections with foreign governments, it adds some new information to a story that I’ve been following for a long time.

The current emphasis is that Saudi Arabia (which I’ll refer to as KSA) wants a nuclear program that might eventually be used to produce weapons. That misses a lot. Michael Flynn was trying to sell nuclear technology to the Saudis for quite some time. That attempt has continued. I have a copy of the report from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, but what I want to do here is discuss the context of the actions described there. This post will be a quick outline, without most of the links it should have.

Early on, Flynn was working with IP3 to sell nuclear reactors to KSA. At the time, KSA said they wanted 16 nuclear reactors. Flynn’s plan included working with Russia and perhaps China to provide the reactors; it also included a heavy security plan that looked likely to include a contractor like Erik Prince to provide the muscle.

As the price of oil went down, KSA could no longer afford 16 reactors, and the plan cratered. But Flynn continued to try to sell reactors to them. He also included American reactor manufacturers. When Flynn was taken down by his Russian connections, interactions to sell reactors to KSA continued.

As recently as last week, Donald Trump was meeting with reactor manufacturers on the subject. Current concerns revolve around safeguards against KSA’s using its nuclear technology to develop nuclear weapons. To do this, the United States requires what is called a 123 Agreement, named for its legal basis. The trend has been toward disallowing uranium enrichment and reprocessing of spent fuel, the two pathways to nuclear weapons, although they can also be justified for peaceful use. KSA does not want those restrictions. It appears that the news today is that some in the administration are trying to meet KSA’s preferences.

The bigger story is that the administration, via Flynn and now others, has been eager to supply KSA with the technology it wants. Other recent news, like the administration’s unwillingness to admit KSA’s brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, suggests a relationship similar to Trump’s favoritism toward Russia.

In January 2017, Erik Prince met with Russian and Middle Eastern representatives in the Seychelles.

There is a nonproliferation issue here, but I think the larger issue is the quid pro quo. KSA wants the nuclear technology. What is the quo?

 

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